Wellesley College acquires 442-year-old Copernicus book

After more than 20 years at Wellesley College, professor Richard French can finally ask astronomy students to spend personal time with the visionary who bumped humankind from the center of the universe to "the third rock from the sun." ...

By Chris Bergeron/Daily News staff

MetroWest Daily News, Framingham, MA

By Chris Bergeron/Daily News staff

Posted Jun. 16, 2008 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jun 16, 2008 at 4:04 PM

By Chris Bergeron/Daily News staff

Posted Jun. 16, 2008 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jun 16, 2008 at 4:04 PM

WELLESLEY

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After more than 20 years at Wellesley College, professor Richard French can finally ask astronomy students to spend personal time with the visionary who bumped humankind from the center of the universe to "the third rock from the sun."

Even if they can't read Latin, students can now visit the Margaret Clapp Library and leaf very gently through a 442-year-old volume of Nicolaus Copernicus' scientific masterpiece that opened the heavens to humanity.

For an undisclosed price, the college purchased a second edition of his groundbreaking "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres"), published in 1566, which made the then-heretical claim the sun, not the Earth, was at the center of the universe.

"I am a big fan of having students in the presence of transformative works like this," said French in the library's Special Collections Room where the book is kept.

"It took a whole lot of time for people those days to understand just what Copernicus was trying to do. He revolutionized the picture of the solar system we recognize today."

Born in 1473 in Torun, Poland, Copernicus was the first astronomer to publish a heliocentric cosmology based on scientific reasoning that contradicted the prevailing Christian claim God created the universe with the Earth at its center.

Championed six decades later by Galileo Galilei, Copernicus' revelations, said French, triggered the study of modern astronomy and laid the theoretical foundations for modern science, from astrophysics to the exploration of space.

As the chairman of Wellesley's astronomy department, French said he uses Copernicus' courageous skepticism to remind students to challenge orthodoxy and "Not always believe what you see with your eyes."

Special collections librarian Ruth R. Rogers helped acquire the book with support from French. "It's been a great honor and a coup to get this book. Everything worked out beautifully," said Rogers, who joined the library 17 years ago. "I used to joke we needed a Copernicus. It's always been my dream to acquire it."

She said funds for the book came from three sources: alumni Nan Walsh Schow and her husband Howard B. Schow, the library and the astronomy department.

"It's in extremely good condition for a book more than 440 years old," said Rogers. "It's not fragile. It can be read with care."

The book contains 142 geometrical diagrams, tables and woodcuts including a groundbreaking representation of the planets of our solar system circling the sun in a series of concentric rings.

While the book's entire history is not known, she said it's believed to have been in two private collections. It was most recently owned by Austrian lawyer Karl Josef Steger until the college bought it from Martayan Lan, a New York-based rare books dealer.

Page 2 of 2 - Rogers said Galileo owned and read the 1566 edition of Copernicus' book while in Florence.

According to the Online Computer Library Center, there are 28 copies of the 1566 Copernicus in U.S. academic libraries, including six in New England collegiate libraries.

Rogers described the new Copernicus as "the third jewel in the crown" of the special collections history of science holdings which includes first editions of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" and Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathematica." The 40,000-volume special collections includes a first edition of Shakespeare's "King Lear," a large papyrus fragment from the 2,500-year-old Egyptian Book of the Dead and 800 volumes on slavery, emancipation and reconstruction.

For Rogers, the "thrill of acquiring" the Copernicus book is exceeded by the satisfaction of seeing students personally encounter a genius who changed the world's self-image five centuries ago in ways that still affect us.

At a May 9 inaugural greeting from the faculty, French presented the vellum-bound book to Wellesley's new president, H. Kim Bottomly, the first scientist named to that position.

French later said he "shivered" when he first opened the book after its arrival at the library. "I turned every page. It took me half an hour to get through the first 30 pages," he said.

In a digital age in which students can find virtually anything online, French said introducing beginning and advanced students to Copernicus' book brings alive the need to pursue scientific truth with open minds.

He said Copernicus' legacy should remind students to not only have the "courage of their convictions but the courage to change their convictions" in the face of new evidence.

"We're in this transitional time for astronomy when we don't know all the answers....We never get fixed answers. We only get better approximations," he said.